Sunday travels

Saturday night we had an amazing meal of local fare thanks to Taylor's translating skills and then we were off to bed to get over some of the jet lag still hanging around.

Sunday morning we all walked to church.  Luckily there are a fair number of American embassy workers who are mormon too so there was english translation.  Taylor was in heaven being back in his old stomping ground.  He served almost half his mission in the city and was excited to see the progress.  Sadly for him, the church has actually declined.  Not because of people going inactive, but when Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007 a majority of the members took the opportunity to go to other countries where they could find better jobs.  You can't blame them but it set the church back almost 20 years in Bulgaria.  So there weren't many members to reminisce with but it was still fun to be there.  Sadly I forgot to take any pictures of the actual church or people he did know.  

This is one of the apartments he lived in.

After church we started our drive to the next city.  But since Taylor had picked the cities we were going to and then I went a little crazy with guide books and pinterest planning where to go, we had to make one cool pitstop.  The Devatashka Cave.  Looks huge from a 1/2 mile away right?

Apparently it's full of all kinds of species of bats.

Luckily we didn't see any.

The amazing part of this cave is that it's got these huge, gaping holes all over the place and the walls and ceilings are hundreds of feet tall.

Just breathtaking.

And in case you needed more history, these are footprints from old fuel silos the communists hid from satelites by hiding them in the cave.

After a quick stop at the cave, it was more driving through the lovely countryside.  Bulgaria is much like Utah in climate and geography except that none of it's desert.

Nothing like a long Sunday drive anywhere in the world.